


have a great day

by moonprism (orphan_account)



Category: NCT (Band), SM Rookies
Genre: Alternate Universe - Retail, Bonding, Co-workers, Dialogue Heavy, Ficlet, Friendship, Platonic Relationships, Unconventional Format
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-01
Updated: 2017-05-01
Packaged: 2018-10-25 00:47:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10753221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/moonprism
Summary: Work is usually awful.





	have a great day

**Author's Note:**

> "Hey, welcome to SuperMart!"
> 
>    
> experimental piece! i wanted to write them all together doing stupid things. i always make ridiculous tweets on twitter and i was like "why dont i just put this humor into a one shot." but doing all of that would be hard in a fleshed out piece, so here is a fic of random dialogue centric scenes. formats like this arent common, and i understand why. this is a messy fic.

** Sunday **

_9:53 AM. Break Room._

“Ten,” Taeil says softly, not because he’s passive, but because it’s nine in the morning on fucking Sunday. 

“What?” Ten snaps, turning to Taeil with a permanent marker in his hand. 

The break room is disgustingly humid from the shift of a short Spring into an early Summer. Everything feels heavy, and their hands feel sticky from the humidity alone. The only source of air is a standing fan, turned on to the highest setting. It no longer oscillates, and Donghyuck is standing directly in front of it to steal what air he can. Does corporate not understand that not every city with this godforsaken store has a continental climate? That, hey, it’s fucking hot here compared to like, Wisconsin or something, and the air conditioner needs to be fitting for their own disgusting climate?

“You can’t put that on the bulletin board,” Taeil says to him, clearly exhausted and not up to fighting with his coworker. “What if the district manager came in and saw it?”

A paper with angry permanent marker reads WILL CASTRATE ANYONE WHO EATS MY FUCKING LITTLE DEBBIES.

“Who died and made you assistant manager?” 

“Dongyoung,” Taeil replies shortly. 

“Dongyoung died?!” Donghyuck yells while frantically turning, knocking the fan to the floor almost. Johnny saves it mid fall right as he walks through the doorway. 

Johnny looks at the “sign” and his eyes go dead. “What the hell are you guys doing?”

Donghyuck rambles quietly. _He can’t be dead. I just saw him yesterday. There’s no way—_.

“Listen,” Ten says, ignoring Johnny’s existence, ignoring Taeil’s assertion, ignoring Donghyuck’s mini manic breakdown. “It’s a risk we’ll have to take.” Ten counts those individually wrapped snacks every fucking day; he knows when they go missing. He knows some rat he works with is stealing them. He bets his left testicle it’s Yuta. 

Jeno enters. “Hey, Joohyun—,” and Johnny immediately shields Jeno’s eyes from the signage. As if Jeno hasn’t been an adult for some time now. But he’s known Jeno since he still had all his baby teeth, and the kid’s practically an angel. Jeno continues talking, eyes covered with Johnny’s large hands. “—said to stop fooling around. She’s about to open the store.”

  
  
  
  


_12:07 PM. Break Room._

“You’re going to get castrated,” Hansol announces as soon as he walks in, throwing his jacket and keys onto a Fourth of July themed table cloth fold out table. 

“Is that a promise?” Jaehyun aks, wrist deep in a box of Ten’s snack cakes. 

Hansol points at the warning sign stapled onto the bulletin board. (It seems Taeil didn’t win the fight.)

“I wouldn’t mind it from him,” Jaehyun says, ripping one of the wrapped cakes open with his white teeth.

“Have fun dying.”

“I will.”

  
  
  
  


_12:40 PM. Left Side, Toy Aisle._

Hansol has been struggling for exactly seven minutes trying to keep the wrestling figures standing upright. The boxes have an absurd shape that make it impossible for them to stand up because the weight of the figure imbalances it. As soon as he gets a perfect row of them lined up and begins his next, they fall over. 

Hansol grunts and throws them on the floor. 

“Can’t get them to stand up?” Jaehyun inquires, pulling his reshop cart to a stop in front of the aisle. 

“No,” he says shortly, hair hanging in his eyes as he stares at the stupid mass of plastic muscled men on the floor. Fuck the WWE; fuck action figures. 

“Just like your dick, huh.”

Hansol snorts. “Fuck you.” 

“You coming onto me?”

“You wish I was coming on you.”

“God, you two disgust me,” Johnny says, appearing from the other side of the aisle, arm full of baby items. They need to be marked down for clearance, and Hansol and Jaehyun don’t understand why he’s carrying them instead of using a damn cart. 

“Gettin’ those for Mark?” Jaehyun asks, deviating from the conversation. 

“I heard that,” Mark shouts from the adjacent stationery and greeting card aisle. He can’t be seen, but his voice is heard well enough. They better be thankful the weather brought a thunderstorm, so there’s exactly two customers in the entire store. Good thing a manager isn’t around. 

“Good!” Jaehyun yells over his shoulder. 

  
  
  
  


**Monday**

_3:28 PM. Customer Service Desk/Register One and Two._

The buzzer rings, signaling someone has walked through the automatic doors. Mark, looking at his phone when he shouldn’t be, panics, shoving it quickly into his back pocket. 

“Hey, welcome to Su—oh, it’s you, dude. I got scared for a sec,” Mark says, pulling his phone back out to reply to the groupchat.

The younger associates—that is, everyone born from 1999 to 2001—created a groupchat after feeling somewhat excluded from the older guys and feeling the solidarity amongst all of them. Mark can’t help that when the store is this fucking dead, he constantly messages the groupchat. They all do. Making comments about customers and employees and sending stupid memes while on the clock. Mark likes the friendship. 

And one of the members just walked in. 

“Who’s M.O.D. today?” Donghyuck asks. He prays the manager of the day isn’t Dongyoung. Dongyoung freaked out on him when Donghyuck texted him and asked if he was dead. Donghyuck doesn’t feel like dealing with it in person.

“Taeyong,” Mark sighs and leans against the register counter. 

“Why do you say it like that?” Donghyuck laughs. “Taeyong is cool.”

“He keeps catching me on phone. I feel so bad for it, dude. What if he fires me?”

“You’ll be alright. I promise,” Donghyuck tells him, pulling up the timeclock webpage on register two’s monitor. 

  
  
  
  


_3:28 PM. Furniture Department._

Taeyong is sleeping on a faux leather sofa, walkie talkie headpiece falling out of his ear. 

  
  
  
  


_6:13 PM. Right Side Center Aisle._

“Alright, I’m ready,” Jaehyun announces in the middle of the walkway. He spreads his legs and plants his feet firmly on the ground. 

Yuta, pushing an extremely bulky sofa on an old green trolley for a customer, makes a fake running start for Jaehyun and eventually slows to a stop when he gets too close to him, not actually trying to create a work related injury. 

Taeil clears his throat loudly from the customer service desk. 

A few customers turn to look at them, and Yuta tries not to laugh. 

  
  
  
  


**Tuesday**

_9:06 AM. Right Side Center Aisle._

“Hey, Kun,” Jaemin says. It’s extremely startling given how quiet the store is this early, and Kun drops a box of kitchen tongs on the floor. “Sorry, sorry,” Jaemin panics, crouching down to help him pick them up. 

“It’s okay,” Kun laughs. “What did you need?” he asks, putting the tongs back into the box. He suddenly realizes he forgot to put the price stickers on them. Great. And he still needs to open the till for the furniture department register. Kun may regret taking the manager position just a bit. 

“Sicheng just called out,” Jaemin says hesitantly. 

Kun’s eyes and mouth fall. Sicheng was his only floor associate until one p.m. 

“I think Ten is off today,” Jaemin speaks up. “Want me to call him?” 

Kun visibly relaxes. “Yes, thank you so much.”

  
  
  
  


_9:08 AM. Customer Service Desk/Register One and Two._

“Hey, Ten,” Jaemin says into the receiver of the desk phone. It’s old, and the instruction stickers are dirty and peeling at the edges. 

“Yes?” Ten says very politely into the phone. Jaemin thinks he could get away with committing murder with how nice Ten is to him always. 

“Can you come in today? Like, soon? Sicheng called out.”

Jaemin hears a loud but muffled and distressed _FUCK_ as if Ten had taken the receiver of his cellphone away from his mouth (which he probably had). 

An angry rushed _yeah_ comes out of the speaker a few moments of contemplating on Ten’s part, and Jaemin laughs. “I need the hours, I guess. God knows they won’t give us better ones.”

“Alright, I’ll see you in thirty minutes?”

“Yes, bye! I’ll see you.”

“I love you, too. Bye!” And Jaemin hangs up and is immediately horrified. He presses his hand to his forehead. He’ll have to say sorry for that later. How humiliating. 

  
  
  
  


_12:03 PM. Men’s Restroom._

Dongyoung is thankful he finally had time to pee. It had been three hours, and he swears to god he was about to develop a kidney infection. The relief is probably better than sex. 

“Damn, dude,” Jaehyun says as he emerges from one of the stalls. It’s the broken one that doesn’t lock with the hinge that might honestly break under the right (or wrong) circumstances. 

Dongyoung screams a soft “Ah!” while zipping his jeans. 

“You peed for, like, fifteen whole seconds.”

“I drank an entire trenta black tea from Starbucks before I came in.”

“Is that why you’re always manic and anxious? Because you drink forty ounces of caffeinated tea everyday?” 

Dongyoung wants to say no, it’s because he has an anxiety disorder. But Jaehyun probably has his own shit. 

  
  
  
  


**Wednesday**

****

_11:34 AM. Customer Service Desk/Register One and Two._

“Jaehyun here today?” Mark asks Ten, who’s actually on register for once. He’s usually only on the floor or on stock team. 

“No,” is all he says. Surprising, though. He’s been working so much lately. Ten feels like Jaehyun’s never not here. 

“Thank God.”

Ten snorts. 

  
  
  
  


_12:57 PM. Break Room._

“You okay, dude? I saw you storm in here like you were about to fight someone,” Jeno says to Donghyuck as he walks through the doorless opening of the break room. Donghyuck is sitting in one of the metal folding chairs, face in his hands, fingers gripping his hair.

“I just,” Donghyuck speaks up, and pushes his back against the chair. “Fuck! I hate customers,” he says loudly, dropping his shoulders and slumping in the seat. “No, we don’t fucking have anymore fireplaces. It’s fucking summer, and the manager is going to say the same goddamn thing. And she keeps demanding to speak to someone, and it’s like, listen, I fucking know we don’t. Just because I’m not a manager, doesn’t mean I don’t understand shit around here? I think I know better than some bitch customer that only comes in here once every two weeks. The fuck? I goddamn live here.” He breathes in. “And to make it worse, I have three finals tomorrow and haven’t been able to study for a single fucking one because I’m working during the hours the library is open, and I can’t study at home because my fucking siblings. And, dude, I might cry. Like a little.”

Jeno lets Donghyuck scream about this, because hey, he understands.

“I’m sorry,” Jeno sighs, trying to console him (poorly). But Donghyuck is just glad Jeno’s break overlapped with his frustrated breakdown; he really wanted to rant to someone. Jeno pulls out the chair next to Donghyuck and sits next to him. “Customers are idiots. But we only have forty five more minutes until we go home.”

“Donghyuck,” Dongyoung says into his walkie talkie, and it’s so staticy sounding that it makes Donghyuck want to pull his hair out. The echo is weird, almost like Dongyoung is speaking in the walkie from the empty closet near the bathrooms. He hates how often he works here for him to figure that out.

Donghyuck lets out an angry half-yell, half-sigh from his throat before hitting the talk button. “Copy,” he says calmly.

“A customer just threw up in Seasonal, and you’re the only one on the floor.” Dongyoung doesn’t say anything else, because he expects his orders to be followed, and Donghyuck snorts before he bursts into tears.

  
  
  
  


_2:39 PM. Break Room._

Ten drags himself through the break room opening, feet sliding across extremely dirty tile. Since the break room is located in the storage room, no one bothers to clean the floor. Ten is still dressed in the clothes he wore to classes this morning, backpack slung over his pretty shoulder. 

“Hey,” he says without looking up. He adjusts his glasses, and that’s when he sees it. “It’s you,” he utters darkly, ignoring the (attractive) new hire Yukhei sitting at one of the tables looking over his paperwork.

“Yeah,” Jaehyun says obnoxiously, mouth full of snack cakes that undoubtedly belong to Ten. Ten owes Yuta an apology.

Ten snatches the half eaten cake out of Jaehyun’s hand, his long fingernails grazing Jaehyun’s skin.

“God, shit, Ten, your nails are too long. We get it. You’re a bottom.”

Ten’s face immediately turns red, eyes glancing in panic to Yukhei (who is _clearly_ listening but being _very_ calm about it). Ten throws the cake at Jaehyun. Ten imagines a cartoon version of himself screaming high pitched, head eventually exploding. “You are the worst.”

“You know you love me.”

“Unfortunately.”

  
  
  
  


** Thursday **

****

_10:01 AM. Left Side Center Aisle._

“Why do none of the girls work with us?” Chenle, another new hire, asks Sicheng. Chenle is shadowing Sicheng today, his first official day. 

“I’m not sure. I think Ms. Joohyun makes the schedule. I think she doesn’t want them to be around the girls.” Chenle thinks it’s funny that Sicheng doesn’t include his ownself as part of “them,” but then again, he completely understands why Sicheng cannot be considered one of “them” at all.

“That’s weird,” Chenle responds.

“Is it?” Sicheng gestures to Yuta and Jaehyun, who are currently “sword fighting” with two broken toy lightsabers near the side wall shelving.

“No.”

  
  
  
  


_10:02 AM. Customer Service Desk/Register One and Two._

“Excuse me, sir,” an older woman asks abruptly. Taeyong’s back is turned to her, and he jumps, trying to shove the last of the Cosmic Brownie into his mouth. The brownie is too much, and it’s sticking in his gums and on the back of his teeth, trying to dig it out with his tongue, and he has to cover his mouth with his hand while he looks at her.

“Yes?” he replies politely. You can tell he has food in his mouth. God, what kind of manager is he.

  
  
  
  


_1:39 PM. Home and Bath Aisle One._

“Johnny told me about your vocal wet dreams you’ve been having about a certain someone,” Ten says slyly, looking around to see if there are any customers around. 

Jaehyun freezes.

“What?”

“Did I stutter?”

Jaehyun _doesn’t_ want to get desperate, but he fucking will. “Please don’t say anything.”

“I’m actually hanging out with him tonight.” Jaehyun will kill Johnny in his sleep. Jaehyun will fight Johnny right here in this building’s parking lot.

“You’re bluffing.”

“No, I’m not.” Ten takes his phone out to show Jaehyun evidence in his text messages of formally made plans. “Please don’t tell him,” Jaehyun begs, looking up from Ten’s phone.

“Twenty bucks.”

“Deal.”

  
  
  
  


_2:10 PM. Back Wall, Vacuum Cleaners._

“I know I shouldn’t tell you this,” Donghyuck says to yet another new hire, Renjun. Donghyuck doesn’t understand why Kun trusted him to be a good trainer for Renjun. Sweet, innocent man. “But I come back here to dick around on my phone or take a power nap on the patio furniture in Seasonal. Never gotten caught,” Donghyuck says proudly. Renjun’s eyebrows raise in amazement. 

“Oh!” Donghyuck says suddenly. “We need to add you to the groupchat. What’s your number?”

  
  
  
  


_1:45 PM. Break room._

A new sign on the bulletin board reads “Calling Johnny Seo to fight Jaehyun Jung in the parking lot on Friday, 2:45 PM.”

  
  
  
  


_2:24 PM. ‘99-’02 Liner Group Chat._

> [IMG_48839]  
**Jaemin 2:24 PM**

> Is this a pic of you doing the [Prison Pose](http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/prison-pose) in Seasonal?  
**Jeno 2:24 PM**

> Nice. good pic. Who took it lol  
**Chenle 2:25 PM**

> I’m with my friend Jisung lol since im not at work but still shopping there thought i’d send it. I look fresh  
> Are all of you working today  
**Jaemin 2:25 PM**

> Yeah. Wanna hang when w  
**Mark 2:25 PM**

> ???  
**Jaemin 2:26 PM**

> W e get off? Get off around 8:30. Sorry lol Taeil caught me on my phone  
**Mark 2:27 PM**

> Where we gonna go?  
**Donghyuck 2:28 PM**

> Let’s go to krispy kreme and watch them make the donuts through the glass, u can invite the new guy Renjun.  
**Jaemin 2:28 PM**

Well, no one really rejects the plan to watch the Krispy Kreme machines make donuts through the glass.

  
  
  
  


**Friday**

_2:42 PM. Parking Lot._

“Well, well, well. Look who decided to show up,” Jaehyun announces to Johnny, flicking his cigarette to the ground.

“Jaehyun, I work today. At this time. My shift is starting. I would show up. We live together. You know this.” Johnny looks to the left of Jaehyun, Sicheng and Yuta sitting on the building’s bench, not wearing their uniforms. “What are you idiots doing here?” Johnny asks exasperatedly.

“We came to watch the fight, duh,” Yuta replies. Sicheng nods his head.

“What fight?!”

“Alright, Seo. Let’s go,” Jaehyun tells him, getting in a (terrible) fighting stance.

  
  
  
  


_9:50 PM. Intercom._

“Attention, SuperMart shoppers. SuperMart closes in ten minutes. We ask you to take your final purchases to the register. We are open 9 AM to 9 PM, Monday through Saturday, and 10 AM to 9 PM on Sunday. Thank you for shopping at SuperMart.”

**Author's Note:**

> "Thanks, have a great day! Come again!"
> 
>  
> 
> i wanted to write a lot of random scenes in a flash fic style. narration/style/pov/etc are all extremely minimalist and lacking bc i didnt want to go in depth with this. it was just for for and to be short! it wasnt going anywhere so i didnt know how to end it. so here is my dumb shitpost of nothing.
> 
> im a shit writer and forgot to make it explicit that everyone in the fic except maybe chenle is over 18 and that only ten and donghyuck are in university summer semester courses. i love being stupid anyways thank you for reading this ;;;;


End file.
